I'm not sure how popular it actually was... Probably closer to a North
American level of popularity rather than the higher European level. I
imagine people liked it for much the same reasons as everywhere else: it
was originally more powerful, capable and stable than any of the
alternatives. Now that those advantages have largely passed, it still has
hobbyists who simply like the platform, as many of us do.

You was assembling eComStation 2.2.
What can you tell about eComStation internals?

It's a pretty well designed system in terms of basic architecture. It's
pretty modular and flexible - there's a fairly clean separation between the
core OS and the services (like networking, GUI, and so on) as well as
within many of the components. Pieces can be replaced or extended
surprisingly easily. That's one of the reasons I like the platform so
much.

Is it perfect or ugly?

"Perfect" vs "ugly" is probably too black and white a description. Of
course, the basic system is not as "modern" as more mainstream operating
systems nowadays. But when you take what we've accomplished as a community
to keep this platform running, we've done a pretty impressive job,
especially considering our limited resources.

It's true that I did a fair bit of work on the first eCS 2.2 beta.
However, since I moved to Japan and started studying for my Master's
degree, I haven't been able to continue with that. I still contribute to
OS/2 in my limited spare time, but my studies are keeping me extremely
busy.

I understand that Lewis Rosenthal in the United States recently announced a
new organization aimed at providing support and updates for the OS/2
community. This sounds like a very promising development, especially when
I look at some of the people involved. When I have more time, I'll
certainly keep an eye out for ways that I can support this endeavour.

What fonts were added to eComStation?
Does it influence on desktop, applications or browser only?

Several high-quality open source fonts were added to eComStation 2.2.
Besides the Deja Vu collection (which has been included for the past
several releases), the Droid and Libertine font collections are also now
provided. Also, several fonts from the GhostScript collection were added
in order to provide a complete set of PostScript-compatible fonts.

A couple of individual high-quality fonts were added as well, namely
Bitstream Charter and Heuristica (an open source fork of Adobe Utopia).

Is it necessary increase interactivity of OS/2 desktop? What means to
use? (more animations, transparency, help bubbles)

I don't think those are important so much as improving the basic usability.
I'd be far more interested in more & updated folder views, better desktop
support for Unicode, more standard controls like proper multi-column lists,
and so on. That's not to say there isn't a place for purely visual
improvements, but I think subtle improvements are much better than flashy
effects. Translucent icons and anti-aliased text, for example - both of
which have had some work done by various parties.

(future) It is possible switch language of eComStation installer on fly?

No, not at the moment. This was actually intended as a feature of the
installer from the initial design phase, and the earliest versions did
support it. Logistically, however, it was ultimately deemed to cause too
many issues for too little benefit. It's not enough to simply switch
language resources, you must frequently also change the codepage, the
keyboard layout, and sometimes even the fonts. And the benefit only
applies to the installer, not to the installed system, which could create
some confusion.

What do you think about centralized setup of operating system?
All configuration settings are distributed among separate programs.

There are arguments to be made in favour of both approaches. Personally, I
think the decentralized approach meshes better with the object-oriented
paradigm of the desktop interface. It's the logical way in which the
platform evolved.

Is it easy separate components of the operating system (Win OS/2,
...) to separate packages so users can install this parts later.

Well... it can be done with the separate service components of the OS, like
the various networking products, or application packages. Within the core
OS component itself, however, it's much harder to do cleanly. Part of the
problem is the OS installer, RSPINST, which is still an IBM program. This
program has been modified frequently, and apparently quite haphazardly,
over the years, and its actual behaviour doesn't always entirely match what
the documentation claims.

Did you see unknown components in OS/2 Warp?
Unofficial functions and uncompleted features?

I don't know about 'unknown', but two very interesting features which I've
spent some time investigating are Feature Install and the Unicode support.
Both of them had a lot of promise, at least in theory, but were clearly
never properly finished. I suspect they're both legacies of the abortive
"Workplace OS" project that got backported into OS/2. It's sometimes
interesting to wonder what might have happened if IBM hadn't poured so many
resources into WPOS (a.k.a. OS/2 for PowerPC). But, of course, dwelling on
"might have beens" is generally fruitless. We have the platform which we
have, so let's focus on sustaining and improving that as much as possible.
Leave the speculation for pundits or science fiction writers.

What libraries for developers do we need?

What I'd most like to see is a set of modern, Unicode-capable controls
which can be integrated into legacy applications. We have QT4, which is
fantastic, but unfortunately you have to write the entire application with
QT from the start... that isn't really much help for developers who want to
update their pre-existing software.

How to migrate to new version of eCS? How to reset eCS to "factory settings"?

There's a migration feature in the installer. It's not perfect, but
honestly, I don't think it's possible to have a foolproof migration system.
You simply can't anticipate every possible situation and design for it,
because there is a potentially infinite number of possible situations out
there.

As for restoring factory settings... the desktop archive feature does a
pretty good job of letting you go back to the first-time desktop and system
configuration.